From 23th June we have a new web page design
The AIRFLEX instrument has been already installed
in the DLR aircraft and test flights have been already performed
in Germany. The
aircraft will move on Monday to Spain to get ready for the first
flights on Tuesday 31 May. Final changes over the plan include now
an overpass over the Alarcon reservoir, a large water body that will
serve as reference for AIRFLEX calibration. Concerning AHS and CASI
they will fly both together in the INTA aircraft. CASI is expected
to arrive today in Madrid, and will be installed in the aircraft
during the weekend (thanks to INTA personnel for the efforts to make
it possible) and they will fly Monday morning for the test flight in
Madrid and then they will move to Albacete on Monday afternoon.
Both aircrafts with the 3 instruments will be located
at the military airport in Albacete.
We have permissions to fly on Tuesday 31 May at
the required times, but for June 1-2-3 our flights are in conflict
with military operations. We are discussing with military
authorities flight time windows and flight altitude issues, and we
are confident a solution will be found without the need to change
significantly our initial plans.
Another issue is weather forecast.
While weather conditions have
been extremely good in the last days in Spain, it seems the forecast
for next week is not so good and we will need to check day by day
along the whole week on how to accommodate the flights to the
expected variable weather conditions. Unfortunately, the dates of
the campaign were fixed long time ago and I am afraid there is
nothing we can do to change the weather forecasts... It seems
conditions are not optimal but good enough to carry out our
experiment.
Dear collegues,
A quick note to let you know final details about
the Sen2flex Mission-1 campaign which is about to start.
For those coming along the weekend, the most critical point is to
clarify the details for the plenary meeting. All the meetings will
take place at the main meetings room at the ground floor of the
Institute for Regional Development (IDR). The room is the same used
for previous campaigns (i.e. SPARC). You will find maps and details
on how to access the building on the new version of the Experiment
Plan and the web site mentioned below. Initially we planned a
general plenary meeting by Sunday but since many teams are arriving
on Monday and the flights will only start by Tuesday, the general
plenary meeting is now moved to Monday 30 May at 19:00. For those
teams that will be in Albacete on Sunday, we plan to have a meeting
on Sunday at 20:00 in the same meeting room to discuss several
issues. Everybody is welcome to the meeting on Sunday, but please
note that the general plenary meeting is moved to Monday at 19:00 at
IDR. Aircraft and instruments operators (AIRFLEX, AHS and CASI) will
attend such plenary meeting, as well as all the ground teams,
responsibles for weather forecast, maps and other support teams. All
the final details will be discussed at the plenary meeting and final
decisions about flight times and measurements plan will be adopted at
such meeting.
You can find information about this item
in the Experimenters Handbook, that you can download from here.
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